The present invention relates to communication or telecommunication. More particularly, the present invention provides a technique, including a method and system, for monitoring and allocating bandwidth on a telecommunication network at a firewall access point. As merely an example, the present invention is implemented on a wide area network of computers or workstations such as the Internet. But it would be recognized that the present invention has a much broader range of applicability including local area networks, a combination of wide and local area networks, and the like.
Telecommunication techniques have been around for numerous years. In the early days, people communicated to each other over long distances using "smoke signals." Smoke signals were generally used to transfer visual information from one geographical location to be observed at another geographical location. Since smoke signals could only be seen over a limited range of geographical distances, they were soon replaced by a communication technique known as telegraph. Telegraph generally transferred information from one geographical location to another geographical location using electrical signals in the form of "dots" and "dashes" over transmission lines. An example of commonly used electrical signals is Morse code. Telegraph has been, for the most part, replaced by telephone. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in the late 1800's to transmit and send voice information using electrical analog signals over a telephone line, or more commonly a single twisted pair copper line. Most industrialized countries today rely heavily upon telephone to facilitate communication between businesses and people, in general.
In the 1990s, another significant development in the telecommunication industry occurred. People began communicating to each other by way of computers, which are coupled to the telephone lines or telephone network. These computers or workstations coupled to each other can transmit many types of information from one location to another location. This information can be in the form of voice, video, and data. Information transmitted over the Internet or Internet "traffic" has increased dramatically in recent years. In fact, the increased traffic has caused congestion, which leads to problems in responsiveness and throughput. This congestion is similar to the congestion of automobiles on a freeway, such as those in Silicon Valley from the recent "boom" in high technology companies, including companies specializing in telecommunication. As a result, individual users, businesses, and others have been spending more time waiting for information, and less time on productive activities. For example, a typical user of the Internet may spend a great deal of time attempting to view selected sites, which are commonly referred to as "Websites," on the Internet. Additionally, information being sent from one site to another through electronic mail, which is termed "e-mail," may not reach its destination in a timely or adequate manner. In effect, quality of service of the Internet has decreased to the point where some messages are being read at some time significantly beyond the time the messages were sent.
Quality of Service is often measured by responsiveness, including the amount of time spent waiting for images, texts, and other data to be transferred, and by throughput of data across the Internet, and the like. Other aspects may be application specific, for example, jitter, quality of playback, quality of data transferred across the Internet, and the like. Three main sources of data latency include: the lack of bandwidth at the user (receiving) end, the general congestion of Internet, and the lack of bandwidth at the source (sending) end.
A solution to decreasing data latency includes increasing the bandwidth of the user. This is typically accomplished by upgrading the network link, for example by upgrading a modem or network connection. For example, upgrading to X2 modems, 56K modems, ADSL or DMT modems, ISDN service and modems, cable TV service and modems, and the like. Drawbacks to these solutions include that they typically require additional network service; they also require additional hardware and/or software, and further they require both the sender and receiver to both agree on using the same hardware and/or software. Although one user may have a much faster line or faster modem, another user may still user the same 1200 kbaud modem. So, the speed at which information moves from one location to another location is often predicated on the slowest information which is being transferred. Accordingly, users of faster technology are basically going nowhere, or "running" nowhere fast.
A further problem with quality of service management for typical business users is that multiple server platforms have to be supported by system administrators. Rumors of the death of NetWare as a network server platform have been exaggerated. Although WindowsNT is gaining market share, there are in excess of three million NetWare servers (and 55 million NetWare clients) currently in use. Mixed networks at both the protocol and operating system platform level, therefore, will be around for years to come as well as the need to improve use of the Internet and its rich information resources. From the above, it is seen that what is needed are quality of service and bandwidth management tools that have the ability to operate in hybrid network environments.